


Operation Fallen Angel

by ananiah



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dystopia, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ananiah/pseuds/ananiah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A caste split hundreds of years before has resulted in two factions of humanity, the Angels and the Dwellers. The lowly Dwellers live on the planet below Heaven, the Angels' flying city, constantly in fear of the technologically superior Angels.<br/>A Dweller brings down Castiel's heliplane on a routine scouting mission, and he’s trapped in the little town of Lawrence, Kansas. Meanwhile, the rest of Heaven is looking everywhere for the wayward Castiel...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fall

Cas calls his heliplane Jimmy. It's a pilot thing, he supposes, as the other pilots in his squadron have done the same. Samandriel named his Alfie, and even Michael, ruler of Heaven, calls his heliplane Adam.

"Authorization Castiel Charlie-November-kilo-eight-zero-Quebec-three."

The alphanumeric sequence CNK80Q3 flashes briefly on the windshield-screen. "Pilot authorized. Welcome back, Castiel," Jimmy’s automated voice says. The screen displays a partial map of Earth and a bunch of other things Castiel just ignores. They’re only distractions...

"White-Two, are you go?" Anna asks loudly, probably for a second time.

"Affirmative, White-One," says Castiel quickly. Anna continues until all five of them have checked in.

"Well, I guess we're off. Scouting mission down in Kansas, supposedly a milk run. Good luck, everyone." Anna gives Castiel a thumbs-up from inside her heliplane.

The planes dive off the landing platform one by one, but this time, unlike practice missions before, they all execute the standard-regulation dive. No one wants to mess up on his or her first.

Castiel grits his teeth in frustration and turns on the plane's engines, hovering the proper three feet in the air before taking off like an ordinary plane. All he wants to do is backflip off the platform and dive straight down to the ocean below, leveling off just feet from those frozen waves, and fly on.

Instead, all five planes hover at regulation height, perfectly level, going no faster than allowed.

They bank to the left, sweeping over the Appalachians on the way. From up here, the mountains look tiny. Castiel could squish one with his finger, but he wouldn’t dare take his hands off the joysticks.

Balthazar’s voice says in his ear, “Hey, Cassie. Fancy a little side trip to the great lakes?”

“Balthazar,” Anna warns.

“Yeah, yeah. Just kidding,” Balthazar sighs, exasperated.

Hester breaks in just then. “Don’t lie. You always put being a pilot second to everything in your life.”

“Everyone, radio silence. If you would,” Anna snaps angrily, losing her temper but only for this moment.

 In the quiet that follows, the only things Castiel can hear are the whir of his heliplane’s engines and the soft rush of air. This, he thinks, is his favorite part of flying. Not the glory, which Balthazar covets, or the prestige (Hester, definitely); just the sheer joy of flying, of being away.

“Castiel, look out!” Anna yells suddenly, “Behind you!”

“What’s behind me?” Cas shouts, twisting around to see what it was. A bright light arced up from the ground below. He wrenches at the controls, dropping down low and spinning away in a perfect barrel roll. The other heliplanes scatter as well.

Another one of the lights comes out of nowhere and smashes into Jimmy’s left engine. Castiel trails black smoke as he falls to earth.

“Cas!” Anna screams, but there’s nothing she can do. “Hester, Samandriel—get back to Heaven! Bring... everyone!”

Castiel is unable to do anything but watch as his heliplane spirals dizzyingly away. Belatedly, he remembers to eject moments before the plane hits the ground.


	2. Look What the Cat Dragged In

“Anna,” Balthazar says quietly. Only static comes back over the radio. “ _Anna_.”

Her heliplane hovers over the fireball blossoming on the ground. “He’s not gone, he can’t be gone.”

“Okay, Anna—”

“You don’t understand! My little brother can’t be gone!” she screams, pounding her console. “Bring him back!” 

<>  

“Yeah, you got one!” Jo holds her hand up for a high-five.

Dean slaps it, taking his eyes away from the rifle’s sight as he does so. “I’m gonna go see if I can salvage anything.”

“Sure thing, Dean. See you at the bar?” she asks.

“You bet.” Dean starts disassembling his rifle with practiced motions and packs it away. Jo’s gone by the time he’s finished.

Outside the bunker’s window, the spiral of smoke from the crash is turning the autumn sky grey and murky. Dean slips the rifle into his backpack and pulls out his favorite gun. It’s ancient; a Colt from hundreds of years ago, and it’s ridiculously hard to find the right bullets. Slung across his right shoulder is a Dweller-issue energy shotgun, another favorite.

Dean hikes out into the forest, following the smoke column.

The heliplane is a heap of twisted white metal and plastics, but among the wreckage Dean can still make out the basic shape of the plane. When he gets closer, he notices with a start that the cockpit has rolled away, parachute billowing in the faint wind.

“Don’t come any closer, Dweller,” a weak voice warns from the cockpit.

He can just see one of those Angels lying half-out of the battered capsule, dressed in white smeared with dirt and blood. Dean flips the safety off the Colt and aims it at the Angel. “Watch it, Angel. I’m the one with the gun.”

The Angel’s crystal blue eyes roll into his head, and Dean runs closer to make sure he hasn’t died or anything. Before, when the Angels were nameless things in the sky, he hadn’t minded quite so much killing them. But when the enemy had a face...

“Hey, are you alive?” he demands, poking the Angel’s shoulder with the barrel of the Colt. He doesn’t get a response. “Awesome. What the fuck do I do with you now?”

Still nothing.

“Just... awesome.” Dean can’t bring the Angel back to Lawrence, the town where he lives. He’d be killed on site, and he didn’t doubt they’d lock him up too. But there’s no way he could just shoot the defenseless Angel.

Dean frowns and holsters the Colt, making sure the safety is engaged. He’s going to have to _drag_ the goddamned Angel back home, and probably leave the scrap metal on top of it all.

He takes his radio out of his pocket. “Heya, Sammy,” Dean starts to say.

“Dean, how many times have I told you to never call me Sammy?” his brother asks by way of greeting.

“Bitch. I’m bringing home... well, you’ll see.”

“Jerk. Is it another girl?”

Dean shifts his grip on the Angel, nearly dropping the radio in the process. “What? No, of course not. I... uh...”

“So, uh, how did your mission with Jo go?” Sam asks.

“Well, now that you ask, Sammy...” Dean says nervously. 


	3. Good Morning, Lawrence, Kansas

When he finally reaches Lawrence an hour later, Dean’s exhausted, and the right side of his shirt is stained dark brown with the Angel’s blood. He still hasn’t woken up. Dean is getting worried. Or, he would be getting worried, if he were the type of guy who got worried about enemy soldiers.

At last, Dean leans the Angel against the Impala and watches a light turn on in the house. The house... Dean sighs, thinking briefly about the room that’s always locked.

“...Dean?” Sam rubs his eyes tiredly. “Oh my god, Dean, is that an Angel?”

“Um...” The Angel slumps over and falls onto the ground, and Dean reacts too late to catch him. He sighs and sits the Angel so he’s leaning on the Impala again.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m gonna call—”

“No, Sam! You can’t tell anyone. Not Jo, or Ellen, or Ash, or... anyone,” he finishes, trying and failing to hold Sam’s gaze.

“But Dean...” Sam protests. “What if... I can’t tell how bad he’s hurt. What if he dies?”

Dean’s face twists in torment. Should he turn the Angel—and himself—in to Bobby Singer, mayor of Lawrence... or should he save both his skin and the Angel’s? But... but...

“Then he dies,” Dean says coldly.

<> 

Castiel’s mouth feels like it’s been unceremoniously stuffed with cotton. He remembered... falling, but the fall wasn’t nearly as bad as hitting the ground. And his heliplane...! He tries to sit up, but someone else’s hand shoves him back.

“Quit squirming around, idiot,” a voice he barely remembers snaps.

“Who... where?” he croaks, squinting in the morning glare.

The Dweller rubs his chin with his hand habitually. “I’m Winchester, and you’re in Lawrence, Kansas. Welcome to Earth, Angel.”

They both jump when the doorbell rings and a moody voice yells, “Dean, where were you last night? I waited.”

“Uh—you... hide somewhere,” the Dweller—Dean Winchester—hisses to Castiel, then shouts to the door, “Just a minute, Jo!”

“Hurry up and open the door,” she snaps.

Cas tries to get up, he really tries, but he’s still so tired. And he’s sure he’s gotten whiplash and broken... two bones? Winchester makes a face and looks around frantically for somewhere to put him.

“Dean Winchester, it’s not like you to keep the ladies waiting...” Jo bangs her fist on the door, trying to peer into the windows.

Swearing, Winchester picks Castiel up from the couch as gently as he can. Another man comes down the stairs and whispers, “Give him to me, Dean.”

The taller of the two brothers—Castiel assumes they are brothers—carries Cas as if he weighs nothing. Downstairs, he can hear Winchester bickering with Jo about last night.

“Hey, there. I’m Sam, and that was my brother Dean,” Sam says. “Uh... sorry.”

“Why am I...” Cas clears his throat painfully, “here?”

Sam doesn’t reply, just sets him down in a spare bedroom. “Sorry,” he says awkwardly. “Uh, so... who are you?”

“Nobody.” Cas turns his head away from Sam.

<> 

“I’m going to look for Castiel again,” Anna says to Balthazar, helmet in one hand. She’s the only one who actually bothers to carry her helmet with her. Her bright red hair whips around her face in the cold breeze, up on the top of Heaven’s takeoff platforms.

Balthazar rolls his eyes. “This is what, the fifth time? Anna, you saw the wreck.”

“And you know what I didn’t see, Balthazar? His body,” Anna snaps furiously. “I won’t stop looking for him, not even if Michael himself orders me to stop. I’d just steal your heliplane.”

“No way—”

In a voice pitched just a bit too high, she says, “Authorization Balthazar India-sierra-alpha-whiskey-echo-sierra-Oscar-Mike-echo. You’re not as inscrutable as you think.”

“Fine, I’ll come with you. Idiot.” Balthazar rolls his eyes.

He watches her plane take off from the platform the boring way, sighing internally at how _traditional_ she could be sometimes—all the times. Then, his plane backflips off the platform, dropping straight down to the ocean below in Castiel’s favorite dive. He rights the plane just in time, barely grazing the waves below.

When Balthazar has finally reached cruising height and his plane is level with Anna’s, he punches in the coordinates for Cas’s crash site. He has them memorized.


	4. In Which Dean Cannot Slither Out

“Dean, what really happened last night? You’re not as good of a liar as you think, you know,” Jo says, one hand on Dean’s shoulder to keep him from moving away.

"Uh... I got back kind of late, and I didn’t remember to call—”

“Dean Winchester, don’t you dare sell me any of your BS and expect me to buy it! What’s upstairs?” she demands suddenly, noticing Dean trying to block her way into the house.

Dean flinches. “Jo...”

“ _What is upstairs_? Oh, move over! You can’t keep me out forever. I’ll tell Mom,” Jo threatens. “Sam? Sam, where are you?”

“Um... just a minute, Jo!” Sam yells back.

Ducking under Dean’s arm, Jo manages to evade him and scramble up the stairs, where Sam and that Angel are.

“Joanna Beth Harvelle!” Dean yells after her, taking full advantage of her middle name.

“Please, _Deanna_ ,” she laughs. “What’re you hiding up there? I bet it’s a kitten.”

Dean rushes up the stairs after her and curses softly. He bursts into Sam’s room hot on her heels, nearly tripping over her in the process.

“ _Dean Marion Winchester_ , there is a sleeping... possibly dead Angel on your brother’s bed. Explain,” Jo says in a voice that garners no argument. “And don’t think you can slither out of this one.”

For once, Dean’s inexhaustible source of comebacks has dried up, and he’s left wondering how he can possibly explain himself.

“Because,” a rough, low voice interrupts impudently from the bed, “he doubtless wants something.” The Angel’s eyes are the same crystal blue Dean remembers.

“I don’t know,” Dean says at last. “I just...”

Jo sits down on the edge of Sam’s bed. “It’s definitely the eyes,” she observes eventually.

 

<> 

 

The tall moose of a man carries Castiel up the staircase, despite repeated protests from the Angel.

“What’s your name?” Sam asks again.

Castiel winces when Sam’s steps jar what he’s assumed to be a broken rib, and he tries to walk softer afterwards. A strident female voice floats up the stairwell and into the room Sam’s brought him into.

Instead of answering, Cas reels off his authorization number.

“You just grabbed that off the Impala,” Sam accuses. “Her license plate number—” Sam winces when he realizes he’s called the Impala a ‘she’ like Dean “—is CNK-80Q3.”

“I most certainly did not,” Cas says, “It’s my—” He stops just short of giving away information to the enemy.

“Your what?” Sam prods.

However, he’s saved from answering by a young woman bursting into the room unannounced. Cas closes his eyes just as he hears her footsteps. “ _Dean Marion Winchester_ , there is a sleeping... possibly dead Angel on your brother’s bed. Explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wanted to believe Dean's middle name is Marion.


	5. Not Your Secret to Tell

They think his eyes are something amazing, which doesn’t really make sense to Cas. Surely Dean Marion’s green eyes are far more interesting, as statistically there are fewer green-eyed people than blue-eyed ones.

“OK, I’m going to ask you one last time,” Dean says threateningly, “What is your name. Do you even have one?”

“My name,” Cas concedes, tired of the question, “is Castiel Micah Novak, though my mother’s last name was Milton. Next question?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “We didn’t ask you for a dissertation. Well, Cas, I think we should start with...” he trails off uncertainly.

“Why did you let me live?” Castiel asks, staring into Dean’s eyes intently. “I can think of any number of reasons why you’d kill me.”

Sam and Jo both lean in intently, clearly curious.

“It doesn’t matter why,” Dean tells him nonchalantly. “Look, are you hungry?”

The spectating Dwellers groan in unison, prompting Dean to snap pointedly, “Quiet in the peanut gallery, please. Are sandwiches okay? Great. If you would, Jo?”

Jo rolls her eyes and says, “You’re lucky I’m a nice gal, Winchester.”

Castiel resists the urge to itch his ribs under the too-tight white bandages. In truth, he’d rather have water than a sandwich, but he figures it’s best to not say anything.

“Castiel? That’s an interesting name,” Sam says inanely.

“It’s my father’s,” Cas tells him.

 

<> 

 

“Anna, you can’t land there! It’s enemy territory,” Balthazar shouts through the radio.

“I didn’t bring you along to tell me what to do,” Anna mutters, setting her heliplane down lightly next to the wreck of Castiel’s. Her plane’s blades are still whirring softly when Balthazar joins her on the ground.

“I can’t believe I just told you that you can’t do something, but that just goes to show how much trouble we could get into! Just because you dated Michael once does _not_ mean you can get both our asses out of the fire.” Balthazar nudges one of the heliplane’s mangled wings with his toe.

Anna nods once, as if to reassure herself that she can go on, and kneels on the grass next to the plane. “Balthazar, please tell me that isn’t blood.”

“Use your eyes for once. Jeez, now I’m spitting back your little aphorisms at you. It looks like someone... dragged him away.” Balthazar frowns and says, “Dweller, definitely. Who else?”

“Then he’s alive?” Anna’s face lit up in delight.

“Probably. I think we should call this in.”

Anna gives him a scathing glare. “Since when did you become Mister Safety? You’re all for breaking the rules.”

“But Anna... this is different.”

 

<> 

 

“Dean!” Jo calls from the open door. “I need to talk to you for a second.”

He stands up from Sam’s bed and sticks his head out into the hallway. “Yeah?”

“No, in the kitchen. I have something to tell you.”

Reluctantly, Dean follows her downstairs. “Okay, tell me.”

Jo sits down on a chair and looks ashamedly at the floor. “Maybe you should sit down too,” she says.

“What did you do?” Dean demands instantly, grabbing Jo by her shoulders. “Jo?”

“She told me, Dean.” 


	6. Behind Bars

Michael inquires pointedly, “Was it too much trouble to ask? I would have said yes. Maybe.”

How did the bastard even find them? Lousy goddamn... Balthazar grits his teeth and decides to let Anna do the talking.

But Michael doesn’t even let her speak. “I’m revoking your wings, both of you. You’re grounded until I say otherwise, after you’ve returned to Heaven.” Michael leaves with a parting shot, “I’m sorry for your loss, Anna.”

 

<> 

 

“How could you, Jo?” Dean demands, “How could you give him away?”

That familiarly accented voice breaks in. “Dean, quit your yapping. It’s early in the morning for an old man like me.”

“Bobby,” he protests, “Whatever you’re about to do...”

“Why are you protecting that Angel, boy?” Instead of being angry, Bobby just looks disappointed. “You know what they’re capable of, what they’ve done.”

Dean knows he should have just _let the angel die_. It was what he did, after all. He and Sam joked sometimes that “saving people, hunting Angels” was their family business. “I know,” he says.

“Then why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out!” he yells angrily. “I’m sorry, Bobby.”

The older man growls, “I ain’t looking for apologies, boy, I’m looking for answers. And that just didn’t cut it.”

 

<> 

 

“I don’t even know what to say, Anna,” Hester says in a tone that suggests she knows precisely what to say, “Grounded with no hope of finding your wayward brother.”

Samandriel, who always seems to be hovering near her, looks innocently at Anna. “You can borrow my plane, if you want to.”

“No, Samandriel! You could get in so much trouble for that,” Hester whispers. “Who knows what Michael would do?”

“But I care about Castiel! Don’t pretend that you don’t either.” Samandriel looks pleadingly at Hester, and then decides to play another card. “I know he’d go looking for you.”

Hester asks rhetorically, “Well, I’m not Castiel, am I?”

“I don’t think two people can fit in one—” Anna starts to say.

“Awright, Milton. I gave you your chance,” Michael interrupts, giving the four pilots the fright of their lives. “All of you are going to the brig. Even you, Hester.”

“But I—”

“Oh please.” Michael actually _smiles_ at them. “Hey, don’t blame me. You all know how we deal with insubordination here in Heaven.”

 

<> 

 

“Dean Winchester, you are the most... dimwitted, moronic, _thoughtless_ individual I have had the pleasure to meet on God’s blessed Earth,” Bobby says, frowning down discontentedly at the Angel. “I can’t have him stay here. The town would hand me my ass on a platter. He’ll have to go in the—”

"Hey, Uncle Bobby,” Jo protests, “I just wanted to let you know he was here! I didn’t want you to shove him in _jail_ or anything.”

Bobby gives her a meaningful look. “You know I can’t just ignore things like this. And besides, there’s no way you three could keep a secret this big under wraps.”

“But Bobby, I don’t even know if we should move him. Plane crash and all,” Sam interjects, sparking a whole other tangent Dean couldn’t really be bothered with at the moment.

He keeps glancing up the stairs at odd intervals, mostly ignoring the conversation as it continues. “I’m going to check on Cas,” he says to them vaguely. “Y’know. I have a feeling.”

 

<> 

 

Cas can hear voices, faint voices floating up the staircase. He catches the low rumble of an unfamiliar voice, and then Jo says loudly, “...in _jail_ or anything.”

At those words, he flinches. He’d rather be under Michael’s baleful glare, about to be grounded forever, than be shoved into some musty old Dweller jail. How would he escape then?

Cas reaches over the bed and unlatches the window, hissing softly when his broken bones protest. As carefully and quietly as he can, he looks down to the grass below. The distance is roughly twenty, twenty-five feet, so there’s no way he could jump without breaking something. The window is fairly close to another part of the roof, and maybe, if he stretched, he could reach it.

He hears Dean say the words “check on Cas,” and doesn’t hesitate a moment before stepping out onto the windowsill.


	7. The Angel in the Forest

Not a single person has called in with an emergency today, and Jody is just planning out a relaxing evening with her favorite book when the phone rings. “What?” she asks sullenly.

“Sheriff Mills? I think... I think there’s an Angel in the forest behind my house—”

Another phone starts to ring. “Hey, Jody, it’s Bobby. We have an escaped Angel floatin’ around Lawrence—”

“Okay, okay, where?” Jody fumbles for her .45 and hovercar keys with one hand, talking to two people in two different phones as best as she can.

Both Mrs. White and Bobby say that the Angel is somewhere between Singer Salvage Yard and the main road, from what she can tell. Jody thanks them and hangs up on Mrs. White.

“Bobby, do you know what he looks like?” she asks.

“Uh, like an Angel. White jumpsuit, kinda smudged and bloody,” Bobby says rather unhelpfully.

She responds sarcastically, “That was very descriptive, thanks for all your help.”

“His name is Castiel,” Bobby supplies.

Jody almost crashes her car into a tree. “His name is _what_?”

 

<> 

 

“Balls,” Bobby swears, looking out the window.

Castiel tries to squish himself further onto the little ledge of roof. The Dweller is so close Cas could reach out and touch him.

“He’s _gone_?” Dean sticks his head outside too.

Eventually, the Winchesters retreat back into the house. Castiel breathes a sigh of relief and starts to slowly edge down the roof. He’s ten feet from the ground when he decides to jump, the impact making his ankles sting. One hand pressed to his ribs, Cas runs into the forest.

It’s chillier than he’d thought it would be for September, and it’s just started to drizzle. Cas can hear the faint sounds of the Winchesters crashing through the forest after him.

 

<> 

 

“I blame you for this, Anna,” Balthazar complains. Their entire squad has been squished unceremoniously into one little white cell, and there are only two beds (which Anna and Hester claimed in zero seconds flat).

“My brother is alive,” she says softly. “But how will he get back?”

Hester rolls her eyes. “Please, Anna, stop thinking about your brother for one moment and start thinking about how we’re going to stop Michael from keeping us here forever.”

Curled up on the floor, Samandriel yawns and comments, “We have to get _out_ before we can do anything at all.”

 

<> 

 

“I can’t let him roam free,” Michael says. “He’s a threat to Heaven, who knows how much he could divulge to the Dwellers.”

Raphael nods once. “So what should we do about him?”

“You know what you have to do.”


	8. Recon

“So. Anna,” Raphael says. She’d punch him if she could actually reach him through the bars. “About Castiel.”  
“I think you can go—” she starts to say hotly.  
“Wait, wait, hear me out. I’m going to find Castiel. Bring him back to Heaven. But I need your help first. Tell me where he crashed.” Raphael smiles. “Please.”  
Anna laughs derisively. “Like I’d tell you anything.”   
“Both of you, shut up so I can sleep,” Hester snaps. “It’s what, midnight?”  
Raphael shrugs. “Alright, I just didn’t want to have to break into your heliplane.”   
Anna’s plane is one of those slim little one-person models, nearly five years old. Next to it, Raphael’s brand new streamlined aircraft puts hers to shame. “Authorization Raphael tango-alpha-Romeo-delta-India-sierra-oh-one-three.”  
“Override code accepted. Welcome, Raphael,” the smooth artificial voice says.   
“Last input coordinates?”  
The plane’s computer reels out a long string of numbers, which Raphael records. “Execute November-Charlie-one-seven-oh-four.” Instantly, the computer shuts down, hard drives wiping. He does the same to the rest of the squad’s heliplanes. Can’t have them following him, even if they did manage to break out of prison.  
It’s dark by the time Raphael’s reported back to Michael.

 

“Cas?” Dean calls, squinting in the growing gloom for the Angel’s white-clad form. “Hey, Cas, where are you?”  
“Shut up, Dean,” Sam whispers. “He’s probably going to run away from our voices, not to them.” He ducks below several hanging branches and knocks his head on them anyway; he’s gotten so tall.   
Dean rolls his eyes. “Sam, he’s hurt and in the middle of the forest, surrounded by townspeople that want to kill him. I’d say we’re his only hope for living.”  
“Yeah, in jail. I’d take the angry townspeople if I were him.”   
Bobby and Jody are off looking for Cas in another part of the forest, but they haven’t had any luck either.   
“Fine, you go towards Lawrence,” Dean says. “I’ll go deeper in.”  
“All right, Dean. Just don’t get lost or anything.” Sam waves goodbye and heads off towards the town’s faint lights.  
“Cas?” Dean yells.  
“Dean?” a quiet, low voice says.  
“CAS!”  
“Dean.”   
“This is ridiculous,” Dean mutters. “Where are you, man?” His flashlight flickers, which is even worse, because weren’t these batteries supposed to be some new carbon tech? He whacks the flashlight against the palm of his hand several times, and the beam comes back on.  
“I’m over here,” Cas says in that ridiculous gravelly voice, and Dean jumps involuntarily. The light falls on the Angel, white clothes smeared with mud, leaning heavily on a tree. Somehow he’s acquired a tan trench coat that’s a size too big, from where, Dean has no idea.   
The Angel looks plaintively at him. “Dean, don’t make me go to jail.” He staggers and Dean nearly trips getting to him in time. Still staring intently at him, Cas grips Dean’s arm tight and warns, “They’ll come for me. They’ll send...”  
“I know.” Dean yells for Sam and Bobby.  
“Dean, they’ll level this town.”  
“What about you? They won’t kill you.”  
Castiel smiles weakly. “I’m expendable.”


	9. Ties

“Come on, Cas, don’t say that,” Dean says without thinking.

“You don’t even know me.” The Angel turns away, but still has to lean on Dean for support.

“Then tell me about you,” he responds. “D’you have any siblings? I’ve got Sammy.”

Cas is silent for a long time until he finally says, “I have Anna. She’s my sister. Our parents are dead, they were killed by... your people soon after I was born. I never knew them, and Anna barely did. We lived with Balthazar.”

Dean is sharply reminded of his own childhood, being shunted between Bobby’s place and the back of the Impala. “I, uh... don’t have parents either, not anymore. I have Bobby,” he says. “He’s close enough.”

There’s a long, awkward silence. “I didn’t think you Angels were so human. You know. My dad always talked about you as if you were robots. But you’re, uh... not.”

Castiel actually laughs. “Everyone in Heaven always told me how you Dwellers were savages. How they’d never let a chance to kill one of us go to waste. But that’s not true.”

“And you’re not a robot.”

 

<> 

 

“I swear to God, Samandriel, if you don’t stop snoring, I’m going to tape your mouth shut,” Hester whispers into his ear.

Poor Samandriel flinches away, eyes wide with terror. “But you don’t have any tape.”

She just smiles fiercely and covers her face with her pillow. “Don’t snore,” she warns, pillow muffling her voice.

“Kiddos,” Balthazar interrupts, “Save it for the morning. It isn’t like you haven’t bickered enough already. And some of us are actually trying to sleep.” The entire cell shushes him in unison.

Anna hasn’t even closed her eyes all night, visions of her brother’s plane crashing to the ground engraved on her eyelids.

 

<> 

 

Bobby and Jody know they have to lock the Angel up. But Castiel, muddy and bedraggled and dwarfed by that dirty trench coat, doesn’t even begin to measure up to the polished white conception of his kind they know so well. Dean’s arm is wrapped tightly around Castiel, as if only he can keep the Angel on his feet.

“Bobby, Jody,” Dean almost pleads, “Don’t.”

Cas shakes Dean’s arm off. “No, Dean, it’s all right. It’s best if I leave here, before Michael arrives.”

“Before _who_ does?” Jody asks.

“Michael. He views any Angel that falls to the Dwellers and lives as a potential security breach, and he’s probably sent Raphael out already.” Castiel sighs softly. “It would truly be best if I were somewhere far away from here before he arrived.”

Dean is about to protest. No way are they sending Cas away to die just like that! But Bobby stops him. “We’re going to have a chat, Dean,” he says meaningfully.

Reluctantly, Dean steps off to one side. “What is it, Bobby?”

“It’s about you and the Angel,” Bobby says, voice lowered. “Why’re you so keen on protecting him? You’ve known him for what? A day?” He snorts derisively.

Dean grinds his teeth. Not this question again. “Bobby, he’s different. He’s not like the others.”

“And I suppose _you’d_ know a lot about that. What about the Angel that burned your house down when you were a kid and killed your mother? The Angel that killed your father?”

“But Cas isn’t like them. He hasn’t tried to kill me, or stab me in the middle of the night, or anything.”

“Sometimes you’re just like your little brother,” Bobby says. “Too nice.”

Angrily, Dean whirls away from Bobby, but then turns to face him again. “It’s almost like I know him. Like we’ve been friends for a long time. I can’t explain it.”

Bobby shakes his head. “Boy—”

“I’m not a boy anymore, Bobby, I’m twenty-two,” says Dean. “I know it sounds like bullshit. But I know it’s... _true_ , too.”

Gaze level, Bobby continues, “Boy, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Yeah, and you do?” Dean asks sarcastically. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the late update! Finals and stuff got in the way... there should be more updates to come now though ^_^


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